Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Terrain: Imperial Streets 003

The other six sections of road complete, I turned my attentions to the bombed out section. Starting with a compass, I marked out the locations of the craters. With these sizes in mind I started cutting triangles of styrofoam to build the skeletons of the craters.

I used hot glue to secure the styrofoam wedges to the hardboard of the base. I cut a few wedges, glue them in place, and repeat until the craters are complete. I've found through trial and error that this method works best: you don't tend to mix up the pieces.

Styrofoam all in place. At this point I start adding DAP wall filler, and waiting. Once the first coat dried, I repeat the process with a thicker layer of DAP, and then off to work. It was dry by the time I got home, and so I applied the third layer, forming the details of the craters and building up the lip.

After these layers of DAP were done, I painted the whole section in Delta black and PVA. Once it dried, I started layering on pieces of cork. Broken bits were used around the edges of the craters. I used PVA to secure them and constantly checked the placement of everything with the cork sheets I had sized for the each end of the section. The PVA securing these initial pieces of cork would be further reinforced with more DAP.

Layer by layer I added cork to the cratered section. The last two pieces to be added were the ends of the street. Before I added them I traced crosswalk marking on them with a permanent marker. After all the glue and DAP was solid, I took to digging out all the cracks on the board. Once again I also peppered the section liberally with cork debris. Finally, I picked out the crosswalk with PVA.

I painted the whole works in two coats of watered down Delta black and PVA, then picked out the pitiful remains of the crosswalks with PVA once again. Blue Grey Slate and Seal Grey came out again for heavy drybrushing. The crosswalks were painted in the now familiar fashion of Space Wolves Grey and Skull White. Graveyard Earth was used in drybrushing the crater interiors, as well as some of the rubble deposits. Black wash followed by another drybrush with Seal Grey. Finally, I used a wash of thinned down Rhinox Hide on the craters and rubble that received Graveyard Earth.

With this section complete, my Imperial streets are done for now. I look forward to expanding the 'set' in the future. Just like when I was a kid playing with Matchbox cars... there was never enough road.